Commentary and analysis to persuade people to become socialist and to act for themselves, organizing democratically and without leaders, to bring about a world of common ownership and free access. We are solely concerned with building a movement of socialists for socialism. We are not reformists with a programme of policies to patch up capitalism.

Monday, December 29, 2014

Saving Africa

Since 2005 LifeStraws proclaimed as a “cheap, portable
personal water purifier,” has been picking up awards; Esquire said it was an
innovation of the year in 2005, Time called it the “best invention of the
year,” Gizmag, without any contrition, called it the “invention of the century”
and Forbes called it “one of the 10 things that will change the world” in 2006.
The “straw” is a long blue tube that “provides access to safe drinking water by
converting microbiologically contaminated water into safe drinking water.”
Publicity images of it show black Africans, sometimes half naked, bending over
to drink purified water through it. Paul Hetherington, a spokesman for WaterAid
in the UK, claimed “it is something that may well have very useful applications
in an emergency scenario. But it’s not a development tool, it doesn’t really
solve the problem of getting water to people.” Innovative devices like
LifeStraw aren’t created with malicious intent, nor are they necessarily
ineffective; many work perfectly fine.

But let’s look at the images again; young, half-naked
Africans hip deep in a pool of water, stooping to drink the water through one
of these devices. When Europeans travel to countries with sub-standard water,
they sometimes bring water filtration systems, tablets or other means to purify
water. We don’t see pictures of them bending over streams, cow-like, drinking
water through LifeStraws. High-tech straws are not suggested as a means to
solving filtration problems for white people, say, in parts of rural Russia or
Romania, where there might be contaminated water, so why are they “good enough”
for Africans? And it isn’t just about straws: the device is emblematic of an
entire industry of suddenly popular, quickly forgotten programs and devices
that will “save” Africans or “solve” Africa’s problems.

Lack of access to safe drinking water is the problem. Almost
a billion people worldwide are estimated to not have access to safe water; and
supposedly around 35 percent of them live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Basically that
means most of Africa doesn’t have access to decent water. That’s a problem. It
was also a problem for Europe and the West well into the 20th century. So why
is it that all the processes that led to safe drinking water in Europe are not
seen as workable for Africa? Why is it the “answer” to African problems is
always some charity with portable toilets or stoves or some other device – even
cardboard bicycles – that no one would ever expect poverty-stricken Europeans to
use? Google “solve Africa’s drinking water problems” and you come across “a
giant basket that uses condensation to gather drinking water.” Looks pretty,
next to some grass huts. But they won’t be using that in Nevada. Nope. Just for
Africans.

Another website claims to have “15 concepts for providing
clean drinking water,” which include a photo of African children who “pump
while playing” and another that proposes transforming “sewage to drinking
water.” Sounds wonderful. No one expects people in America to drink sewage, but
in Malawi it’s a great idea. Another system made by SunDwater uses a “green...low-cost,
low maintenance system that converts dirty or salty water into potable water.”
It involves a four-square-meter photovoltaic dish (like a satellite dish) and
the water is condensed on it. It sounds nice, but it isn’t a real solution;
after all, no one is going to be using it in Portugal, so why expect it to be
used widely in Uganda?

A story in 2013 tells of a school in Tel Aviv where ninth
and tenth graders are testing the simplest, cheapest and fastest way to solve
the problem of malnutrition.” In plastic
bottles they had bred a blue-green algae called spirulina, that looked like
green slime, and the theory was this would be good for Africa. I have a better
idea: serve this in the cafeteria of schools in the wealthy communities of
Israel, and if the kids there agree to eat it for a year, then export this idea
to Africa. Because if a bunch of nice kids in your community don’t want to eat
green algae, don’t expect “Africans” to want to.

“Watering the grassroots” was a project to train African
women to solve water problems.” Using a “rainwater harvesting system” Oddly,
that wasn’t the solution to China’s drinking- water issues. Just Africa. In
China the Ministry of Water Resources estimated that as of 2005 three-hundred
million people were unable to access safe drinking water. Almost 200 million
people in rural areas were still exposed to harmful substances. To combat these
problems the government was investing in a massive “11th five year plan” which
envisioned plowing $5 billion into safe drinking water. By contrast 334 million
people in Sub-Saharan Africa were estimated in 2010 to not have access to clean
drinking water. That’s roughly the same as in China, yet in China they are
digging up rivers, laying pipe and building massive infrastructure projects
worth twice the GDP of Malawi to combat this scourge; they are not handing out
straws, solar panels and baskets.

Solutions to problems in Africa tend to involve handing out
21st century high-tech gadgets to infrastructure-poor countries that require
massive 20th century reforms and solutions. All of the problems Africa faces,
whether it is the supposed need for “smokeless stoves” or clean water, are ones
every other country in the world faces or has faced. Yet the solution for
Africa almost always does not take into account incremental changes that people
want; rather they envision some miracle device that “solves all these problems,
and would help reach the Millennium Development Goals,” or some foreign imposed
solution. The Western concept of “saving” and “solving” Africa’s problems too
often derives from a sub-conscious racist “white man’s burden” mentality,
wherein the “starving African” is “saved” by the white man from abroad. The
solutions offered are manifestly inadequate and ridiculous, but serve
industries of charity and self-promotion. The legions of nonsensical awards for
these inventions are part of this “salvation” culture. If you want to save
Africa, demand that the technology be exported there to bring it up to Western standards.
Don’t expect people there to live a life drinking out of straws like cattle and
eating algae slime.

“Saving” Africa, or “building schools in Africa” has nothing
really to do with Africa.